80 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 



times even the sight of the sky and the buzzard. It 

 was not until half an hour's struggle that, climbing 

 a pine-crested swell in the low bottom, I sighted the 

 bird again. It had not moved. 



I was now in the real swamp, the old uncut forest. 

 It wa a land of tree giants : huge tulip poplar and 

 swamp white oak, so old that they had become soli- 

 tary? their comrades having fallen one by one ; while 

 some of them, unable to loose their grip upon the soil, 

 which had widened and tightened through centuries, 

 were still standing, though long since dead. It was 

 upon one of these that the buzzard sat humped. 



Directly in my path stood an ancient swamp white 

 oak, the greatest tree, I think, that I have ever seen. 

 It was not the highest, nor the largest round, per- 

 haps, but in years and looks the greatest. Hoary, 

 hollow, and broken-limbed, his huge bole seemed 

 encircled with the centuries. 



" For it had bene an aimcient tree, 

 Sacred with many a mysteree." 



Above him to twice his height loomed a tulip pop- 

 lar, clean-boled for thirty feet and in the top all 

 green and gold with blossoms. It was a resplendent 

 thing beside the oak, yet how unmistakably the 

 gnarled old monarch wore the crown ! His girth more 

 than balanced the poplar's greater height; and, as 

 for blossoms, he had his tiny-flowered catkins ; but 

 nature knows the beauty of strength and inward 

 majesty, and has pinned no boutonniere upon the oak, 



